The Overview #75 - Building Momentum

Hey there. This is The Overview, a weekly roundup of noteworthy B2B SaaS stuff. You’ll find interesting thoughts, articles, and more from around the internet.

In this post:

The root cause of failed marketing

I think most failed marketing is the result of poor strategy, not poor execution. The wrong goals, the wrong audience, the wrong go-to-market, the wrong channels.

It’s easy to blame frontline marketers for bad results. If a single ad doesn’t work, or if the landing page fucks up then sure, blame the marketing exec.

But if it’s a consistent pattern of poor results, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, the blame needs to shift to management.

And usually the root cause is one of those mentioned in Ramli’s illustration – bad positioning and bad storytelling, poor data analysis and poor user research.

A secret tip for accountability (and your CV)

It’s surprising how, regardless of the size or maturity of company, most product marketing projects run without goals.

Goals – intended outcomes of projects – should be front-and-center of every project plan. The first thing you plan with a product launch. The things you track about every week in your updates.

Set leading goals to help you gauge reaction and allow for early warnings to shift course and change direction. Set lagging goals to prove success, encourage (and show) accountability, and prove the impact of your work internally.

But also… for your portfolio and resume! You’re more likely to get past the CV review and initial conversations (at least!) when you can talk about the goals that your work achieved.

So do yourself a favor now: set some goals, do better work, prove success, and set yourself up for the next big thing too.

Working with sellers

It really is as simple as this: sales reps want to be handed opportunities they can work. Ideally they won’t do SDR work. They just want to close – always be closing.

(Low performers and high performers will happily take any opportunities they can get. Mid-performers will want more and more curation of their opportunities.)

Swipe File: DIY category design

???? When you become a free Building Momentum subscriber, you get access to my exclusive product marketing swipe file! Click here to find out more.

Here’s a great Notion doc with tons of info on how you – an early-stage marketer or founder – can start to design a category for your unique product.

Introducing Minimum Viable Category Design (MVCD). An agile variant of the Category Design methodology I adjusted to fit the needs of early-stage startups. It combines the Play Bigger playbook with an agile approach.

I did this out of my frustration of seeing many fantastic Opinionated Products get lost in the market vacuum, and many fantastic Founders who are Product-FIRST act as Product-ONLY, because they forget the existence of the Category dimension.

Have fun!

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